HIRE ME TO SPEAK
HIRE ME TO SPEAK

Harry Potter ebooks and generating attention for your business

I write about strategies to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. I also share ways to use real-time strategies to spread ideas, influence minds, and build business.

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Pottermore invite
Last June, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling launched Pottermore, a fan site that was initially launched as a private beta. I wrote about it here Pottermore, Apple and "the secret will soon be revealed" form of real-time marketing. I managed to get a beta login, so I'm a registered user on the Pottermore site.

Last night got an email saying that the new Pottermore ebook store is open and that the Harry Potter books are (finally) available in electronic format.

This is significant because it is the first time that Harry Potter books are available as ebooks and the only place to buy them is on the author's own site. (If you go to Amazon to buy a Kindle version of a Harry Potter book, you're re-directed to Pottermore).

Attention

The book business is changing. So is the music business. And these changes have ramifications in your business too: How you generating attention?

Now authors can easily get a book out without going to a publisher and without using paper. And they can control their distribution.

Or they can choose to lose control and make their work completely free with no registration required.

That's not to say that traditional publishing is going away. I actually think print books and the big publishers have a future in the new ecosystem.

You no longer need to convince an editor in New York or an A&R guy in LA that your work is worthy.

Now you can create your own audience, build your fan base, publish your art, and control its distribution. Or you can make your work completely free so you can spread it far and wide like Summer Land did.

Seth Godin has been talking about these themes on his blog and on his Domino Project site.

Check out this Domino Project post from Seth on what happens when you flip scarcity with abundance (hint: everything changes).